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Incredible SpaceX Starship video shows off SN5 'hop' in exquisite detail

The best vision of Tuesday's hop was captured by cameras inside and outside the prototype Starship.

Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
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Raptor engine firing as the hop is completed

 SpaceX

Elon Musk's SpaceX  shot a giant tin can into the Texas sky on Tuesday and while many viewed the event from livestreams provided by the rocket-watching community, no one had quite the view SpaceX cameras did. A 60-second video released by SpaceX on Tuesday shows the gentle ascent and descent of the Starship SN5 prototype like nothing else.

The silver grain silo rockets into the air as plumes of grey smoke whip at its base, the raptor engine wobbles as it descends back to the ground and prototype's landing legs flip out, in perfect synchronicity, to allow the giant thermos to land. 

Honestly, I could spend three years writing about what happens in the video of the first  "hop," but I would never come close to doing the vision justice. It's really quite a sight to behold.

"Mars is looking real," tweeted Musk shortly after the flight.   

SpaceX has had a monumental week. The spaceflight company's Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned two NASA astronauts from the International Space Station on Aug. 2, with a successful splash down in the Gulf of Mexico. After analyzing data from the mission, known as Demo-2, SpaceX will begin to gear up for the first official flight of the crewed vehicle, potentially later this year.